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Jo C., Barrister

Category: Law

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Experience: Over 5 years in practice

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I am getting constantly harassed by neighbour. I have have

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I am getting constantly harassed by neighbour. I have have been reported for numerous things, (reported to social services, been investigated for fraud had environmental health contact & visit me, just to name a few) which I have followed up and nothing has ever come of them. What can I do as this is now getting me down?

This is the 8th report and like I said Ive replied to them all and attended interviews. Nothing has ever been done and I have had apologies from most the authorities for them wasting my time. The worst was being reported to social services who advised me to call the police for malicious intent (or something like that) as they contacted my health visitor at the time who couldn't praise me enough. But Ive been reported for about everything now!

There has been case law that might assist you but it does have limitations.

Proceeding on the basis that these are false allegations, there are offences in making false allegations. There are various problems with those offences.

The first problem is that its one thing to show that nobody believes allegations and another thing to show they are false. Its very difficult to show allegations are false in the sense that the person who makes the report knows that they are lying rather than just mistaken. There are a large number of reports which is helpful here.

The second is that the obvious offence is perverting the course of justice. There has to be a course of justice to pervert. The social services reports may well collapse for that reason as they themselves are not a prosecution. Actually, despite the way they behave, neither are the RSPCA. The reports to EH and the local council generally may offence. However, perverting is an expensive offence to prosecute and its got a high test. Its rare that anybody is prosecuted.

More likely a false alleger gets a wasting police time fine which cannot be issued here because they have not made a report to the police.

There is an argument though that making false allegations or truthful allegations that amount to only things the reasonable person would not bother to report because they are so trivial amounts to harassment. The case of Waxman has confirmed that it is possible to use the courts to harass.

The police will not act. They do not accept that harassment extends to making false claims. Also, they are too busy mediating domestic squabbles to deal with anything intellectually complicated.

You could sue at the county court though. There have been 8 reports which is a substantial number. In fairness, I should mention that the harasser in the case of Waxman had made literally thousands of trivial reports and issued against his target at the county court repeatedly for 8 years or so. But you do have an argument.

The other alternative that the police may consider is malicious communication if they can prove that the communications are false.

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